Obama makes history!

I’m sure there was plenty of number crunching, and probably he waited until today to avoid being accused of interfering with North Carolina’s insanity, but the discussion is now officially altered. Remember that on the eve of the passage of the Civil Rights Act over eighty percent of the public opposed mixed-race marriage. Sometimes the people lead. Sometimes leaders have to lead.

It’ll probably cost Obama a swing state or two, but it puts Romney into a tough spot as to how to respond. He wants to appeal to independents (who don’t see this as a political issue and don’t want it in the national discussion), but he has to worry about the tea party fringe. I’m wondering if it was Lugar’s Waterloo rather than North Carolina which prompted this move. Actually, I suspect it was planned. Biden hinted at it several days ago.

This does not meant that the President’s decision today was entirely without some political risk, but I believe it will be clear in the days ahead that this will cost him no votes, since those opposed to legal equality for LGBT people were already inclined to oppose him, and that it will make it easier for us to mobilize the people in this country who oppose discrimination to help reelect him.

I disagree slightly. Probably it won’t cost him many votes because while some, particularly in the African-American and Hispanic communities, oppose gay marriage, it isn’t a significant voting issue in Presidential choices. Obama did quite well in 2008 when Prop 8 passed. There was obviously some overlap.

” “We’ve arrived at a point where the President of the United States is going to lead a war on traditional marriage,” Rush Limbaugh said on his show Wednesday.” His first, second, third, and fourth wives could not be reached for comment.

44 comments

Call me crazy. Call me delusional, but I can’t help but think there’s a good chance Gary Johnson’s winning the LP nomination last weekend brought this about. Strange he’d win the nomination on Saturday and Monday this becomes an issue with the White House?

You have a past two- term Republican Governor from a Democratic state who was open about supporting same sex marriage from the start. Fiscally conservative, socially tolerant and against U.S. aggression of other countries. I’d call that a fairly credible threat as far as getting some left leaning folks looking his way.

He would have been the only candidate on the ballot in all 50 states that supported SSM if Obama hadn’t changed his tune. No way of knowing for sure, but I’ll bet we owe this change to Gary Johnson.

I think the timing has more to do with the North Carolina referendum and the calculation that he had to put up or shut up. I also think the Lugar election revealed an opportunity to put a wedge between the Republicans and Independents. I don’t think more than 3 percent of the population even knows who Gary Johnson is, and I doubt that he’s even on Obama’s radar.

Well, the point is that it will probably lose him votes. So the strategic question is why not last year? Obviously he left it to the states. He doesn’t have any power to do otherwise (except try to repeal the DOMA maybe).

Joe Biden put Obama on the spot last Sunday. And I’m not so sure this will cost Obama votes in the few states that matter. Consider Barney Frank’s point, then consider the other side of that same coin — namely 2008 Obama supporters who think he’s capitulated too much. His gay marriage statement highlights a stark contrast between the two candidates (and Eric’s right, Fred, Gary Johnson simply don’t rate). As such, it may inspire more enthusiasm from the left.

Maybe that is the point. Maybe he does not believe what he is saying. He just wants the political points.

Again, the problem with that theory is that it’s not going to earn him points. He’s going to lose points. I think people around here exist in an insular plain, and we forget that the majority of people still oppose us on the issue, some quite strongly. If he did this to make “political points” then it will go down as one of the most ridiculous political blunders ever. This is a gamble, and could quite possibly cost him the election. Probably not, but maybe so.

Leave it to the North Coast Journal staffers to be automatically dismissive and disrespectful towards any and all third party candidates — even a two-term governor. Burns wouldn’t be doing Judy Hodgson’s bidding otherwise.

I was mildly surprised by President Obama’s timing, but completely floored by the press reaction.

I guess I really do have a different perspective on things — I view politician’s opinions on such matters as trailing indicators, not leading indicators, and I don’t think they have much relevance — certainly not as much relevance as the press seems to think this one has.

I nearly laughed out loud listening to Andrew Sullivan’s story of tearing up, and I’m gay and married.

The exciting news for me is that public opinion polling on gay marriage is apparently changing at lightning speed in favor of equality, not that a President has decided the risk/reward ratio in speaking up has entered what his advisors consider an acceptable zone.

The single most interesting part of the extended news coverage is the Washington Post story about Romney being an anti-gay bully in high school, confirmed by interviews with five classmates. He went so far as to cut off an unwilling classmates long bleached blond hair. He says he doesn’t recall.

Would you recall if you cornered a classmate while your gang members held him down, and then cut off his hair?

I don’t know if this story will get traction (“I was in high school… these people have to drag my high school days into it…”) but it would be so sweet if a high school thug’s high school record was decisive in preventing him from becoming President of the United States.

Meanwhile, the Romney bullying was recalled five decades later by five classmates; here are three, from the Daily Mail story I linked above:
“The incident was recalled by five former Cranbrook pupils including Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor, who helped hold Mr Lauber down.

“He said: ‘It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me. What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.’

“Phillip Maxwell, who is now a lawyer, added: ‘It was a hack job. It was vicious.’

“Mr Friedemann, a dentist, also felt bad for not stopping it happening and admitted Mr Lauber was ‘easy pickins’.”

Regardless, just as with everything else, you pick up and run with something you find on someone you don’t like. When something comes up about someone you do like, Gallegos, for example, you do your best to attack it.

I guess that’s run- of- the- mill politics, but I like to feel I’m above that sort of thing.

A 17 year old can be convicted to life in prison so giving Romney a pass for his unprovoked and vicious attack on a student suspected of being gay because he didn’t like the way he looked (gay) is beyond absurd. That he claims he can’t remember it is alarming. How many boys did he bully that he can’t remember such an extreme event? This story just shows how deeply ingrained his sociopathy is. He doesn’t care about other people and he never has.

Mitch – I have to disagree with you on this one. Yes, the polls are improving, but people seem to answer the pollsters one way and then vote another. I think Obama’s chances of winning are less than they were two days ago. I hope I’m wrong.

Some interesting thoughts from Josh Marshal on Romney’s handling of the high school bullying (assault and battery actually) story. Romney and his team seem to be in denial about the seriousness of the story, and his responses are less than consistent. Example – if he doesn’t remember the incident then how to explain his response that he didn’t know that the victim was gay. And how do you forget something like that?

Thanks, Eric. I saw that Josh Marshall piece. There was an earlier piece in which Marshall quoted from one of his readers about one explanation for Romney not recalling the bullying incident being that he’s a sociopath. Though lots of people will probably consider that over-the-top, I think it’s a perfectly reasonable speculation, and I think there are a lot of sociopaths in high places in our society. Part of being a sociopath is being charming and believable.

What personality type do you think is able to shut down companies and throw fleets of middle aged people out of work in order to get a better bottom line for some billionaire, then go home to the wife and kids? What personality type do you think runs ad campaigns like Swift Boat Vets for Truth, or fights regulations on tobacco companies?

I think it’s perfectly reasonable for Romney to assert that they just didn’t think about homosexuality back in the 60s. I can believe that Romney just felt the kid was too sissified, without linking that explicitly to sexuality. A bully doesn’t need to bully homosexual children — any weak or less popular kid will do. (Maybe a repressed homosexual bully would specifically target kids for appearing gay — I doubt that’s Romney’s problem.)

I wish every voter would ask themselves if they think they’d remember cornering a frightened classmate in high school, having one’s friends hold them down, and cutting off their hair? I wish every voter would ask themselves if, once such a person grows up, they’d be their first choice for leader of the free world? Romney went on to cut funding for a Massachusetts anti-bullying program.

It’s revealing that Romney’s apparently had a hard time finding classmates from his high school to support him; in a truly cringeworthly little news item, one classmate revealed that Romney had asked him to say something helpful and he “hadn’t decided” yet whether he would. Sounds like his classmates that remember him don’t remember him all that fondly.

Can someone change in fifty years? We’d all better hope so. Did Romney change from being a bully? I doubt it.

What would have pushed him to change? He was never punished, and he’s led a wealthy brat’s life for all his life.

He probably thinks, like a high school bully, that he can get away with anything he tries to get away with. That would explain his lack of shame in things like claiming credit for the auto bailout, or being against “Obamacare,” which he practically designed, or the ease with which he puts on and takes off the other necessary opinions of the day.

As Marshall points out, all he really had to do was get out in front of the story, admit that he was a jerk to some people in high school as often the dominant high school clique members are, that he wouldn’t tolerate similar behavior from his own children and that he’s made certain they’re better than he was, and apologize. We wouldn’t be discussing it several days later.

We probably won’t be discussing it several days from now anyway. I hope I’m wrong.

In my own paranoid fantasies, I’m half-wondering if this is all a giant setup to get a new Republican nominee in place without giving the Dems time to vet them. Americans Elect will probably have Buddy Roemer on the ballot in most or all states.

At the Iowa Faith & Freedom event, Paul mocked President Obama’s remark that his view on marriage was evolving. “Call me cynical, but I didn’t think his views on marriage could get any gayer,” he said.

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